Ballad About False Beacons

We’ve been bewitched by countless lies, by azure images of ice, by false promises of open sky and sea, and rescued by a God we don’t believe. Like coppers rattling from a beggar’s plate guiding lights have fallen on our days and burned and died. We’ve pressed our ship a pilgrimage of nights toward such lights as, always elusive, lured and tricked the keel upon the rocks and ripped the helmhold from the hand and lashed the beggared palm to scraps. Ice tightens at the bow and breath. To dock, to dropp the anchor to its rest, to drift (a dream!) on waters quieted and calmed. We can’t. We’re after a mirage. (The whiskered walrus brays; the sea salt thaws. Again, we’re off!) Raised on powdered milk, we’ll have no faith in beacons any longer, nor mistake real for fake, or waking for a dream. Beacons can’t be trusted. Trust instead the will of your own hand and head. Again the captain waves his glass, sights a beacon, turns and cries 'Helmsman! There’s a beacon. Are you blind? ' But Helmsman, with the truer eye thinks mutiny and grumbles, 'A mirage.'